a teaspoon of hemlock
by quorra laraex
Summary: Falling out of love is harder than she thought. — Sasuke/Sakura


**a teaspoon of hemlock**

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It has been approximately—no, accurately—seven hours and forty-two minutes since he's been gone.

She doesn't miss him.

She shouldn't.

When he doesn't come back fifty-eight hours later, she's still sitting in the exact same spot.

No food has been eaten. She has an empty bottle of some sort of alcoholic beverage in her hand. The bottle's green, not nearly as transparent the color of her face has gone. Sake, it was, maybe. She could care less. She remembers why she had it in the first place.

The clock does this little, barely audible, chime every hour of the day, and despite the loud snores of her friends, she hears it. Everything is quiet to her and it's particularly unsettling. No; unsettling is the fact that her friends can snooze without an utter care of his leave. Even _Naruto_ had—Naruto had _defended_ him—defended the _betrayer_. They had—_they had_ just got him _back_—and they were going to _celebrate_—and once—once they're all out of view and she's taking a couple minutes to grab the alcohol to enjoy the night—he fucking _leaves_.

Sakura does not know how to change this—the volume, the tick and tock of the measurement of stupid time (the damned time that consumed her and ate at her alive and rang in her ears—it's the time she's counted every day, every hour, almost every minute of her life right down to the brim of seconds), and the way the beating in her chest feels like it's been deteriorated, gone—vanished—

Just like him.

-x-

"_He's just—he's just trying to find himself, Sakura-chan."_

"_He has! And what's important is that we've got him now, too! He's back—he was back."_

"_But—the important thing is that it's guaranteed that he won't hurt all of us anymore. His dues are done. There is peace."_

-x-

She's lying on her mattress in the dead of night. Suppressing the pain in her gut, she begins to note every, small thing almost sporadically before she can feel herself dozing off. Locks of bubblegum spluttered cherry blossoms caress the sides of her face in warmth. She has to cut it. It's grown too long. There are crickets outside. The air is warm, breezy—sky, dark. Stars—many. Too many. The ninja begins to count them.

It doesn't help. It never does.

She wakes up with groggy red orbs, and dim circles beneath them. It's a new day, she tries convincing herself. But no, it's actually the sixty-third day. It has been over two months.

Two months of this damned repeated cycle of nothingness and stupid, so, so, stupid cradled and inescapable thoughts and little regrets that make her lose her mind.

What did she do to deserve this?

Naruto tries helping her, he does. He has always tried his hardest, but she never notices. And when she does finally notice, however, her only acknowledgement is a weak smile and polite declines replacing her normal sulking or anger-engulfed scoffing. He can't help her. And she realizes that maybe no one really can. Ino has the aggressiveness as a jackass tiger and when she snaps at Sakura, Sakura could have only expected it. And sure, Kakashi may have books, but they have yet to lend a hand to her.

When it reaches the ninetieth day of his disappearance, Sakura decides she hates that stupid prick of the Uchiha Clan. She loathes his mentally unstable ass. She despises him, more than she despises her best friend's pathetic ramen addiction and her placement being the weakest one of the supposed Team Seven. She hates his corrupted mind, his tortured soul; she hates his voice—deep, dark, powerful, and insane. She hates how psychologically damaged he is, and how psychologically damaged he's made _her_ and everyone he left behind just when things were finally being healed without a single explanation or sentence or clue or goodbye—_fucking damn she hated him_—and what Sakura could not stand the most?

That she could never hate him, even if she tried or told herself or wrote it in her journal until all the parchment was filled up. Sakura could never hate Sasuke Uchiha.

-x-

Time reaches a year, and Sakura has grown a centimeter. Her hair is short, neatly trimmed, curling just a bit at the end of her shoulders. Messy and layered, like her thoughts that she's been trying to organize. She's got a lot to learn, she knows.

Her pea green eyes are in the brightest shade they have ever been in, and Sakura finds out what it is like to smile again. The feeling is nice—it's different from the immovable stones that were planted in her stomach that make her weaker as the minutes go by. It has been a struggling twelve months, but Naruto finally hears the girl he loves' laughter. He was scared he would have never heard it again.

As time goes by, it's evident to all their friends that the whipped blonde boy is still in love with her.

Ironically, they don't notice someone else still carries her heart.

She'd always been a great actor.

-x-

And the clock advances again, faster and faster, and she doesn't even really notice. Nor does she care.

Sakura stops counting the stars, and soon after that, she stops counting the days, as well.

She also stops sleeping alone at night. She wakes up to a bundle of messy, boyish, golden hair and oceanic blue eyes, and entangled legs.

All is well, she thinks too early when they breathe and stare into hazy eyes.

And he says something she remembers that had also escaped her lips long, long ago, just as sincerely and almost as vulnerably, except they weren't on the boundary of Konoha in the sleepless night.

"I have always loved you. Stay with me."

She doesn't realize how timid she had become. She doesn't say anything in return, only staring—but it's already clear to him. She hadn't been looking, at all, any longer, anymore. Her eyes are ghostly against his and it becomes painstakingly obvious that she'd been looking through him. Her orbs are searching for a sense of comfort, the seas of black that she knows is just a deep navy blue that Naruto's juxtaposed greatly against—and to his misfortune, he couldn't give her what she needed.

-x-

"_Where… Where is Sasuke-kun?"_

"_He's gone."_

"_When is he coming back?"_

"…_I don't know."_

"_H-How can everyone just sit around and act like this is normal? He was right in our hands and no one stopped him from leaving again!"_

"_Sakura-chan, _please_."_

"_He didn't even—we didn't even…"_

"_He couldn't have just—"_

"_Don't. Don't tell me. He should have… He should've." _

-x-

Sakura's nineteen years old.

Her eyelids flutter open in the light creaking in from the cracks of her window. The air is warm, the atmosphere peaceful. There's an assortment of birthday letters compiled on her desk beside her mattress and various stacks of boxes in the corner of her room. There's no arrangement beside her collection of thoughts mainly about who's gift came from who and how she got home the night before.

Surprisingly she didn't have a headache.

She's by herself, but she doesn't mind. She feels better than usual, despite the fact the boy that had loved her for god-knows-how-long allowed their romance to decay without knowledge of the suffering she kept to herself. But—as strange as it was—and as rude as it sounded—Sakura Haruno felt that she was not being tied down anymore. The years were lie after lie and pretending and faking and lonesome nights were all she had to be herself. Play time is over.

-x-

All there is in sight are green trees and milk white snow. Her heart feels as cold as the mist.

She's in the forest and she can't remember how she had even gotten there. She pushes her bubblegum hair away from her face withstanding what the weather has done to her cheeks and stands with the scarf around her neck and the coat tight against her frame. Little memories flicker past her mind; she can't help it.

Time passes by, fast and slow; she should be used to the routine by now. She isn't.

She tries recalling the little bits that dragged her to leave Konoha, forcing her mind to relapse. There's a yelling Ino and an angry Naruto and shattered specs of glass on the floor. There's blood dripping from her arm. Sakura blinks, taking a glimpse back at the gash from earlier. It's bandaged, poorly—if she may say so herself. She remembers screaming to not look for her, and she'd done it while running.

She had been running, and running, and running, her boots pounding on the crunchy snow and her breath uneven in panting. Her hair's a rat's nest bundle of salmon pink and her face is snow white except for her burning cheeks. She doesn't know why she went here—perhaps something had just told her to stay, to wait and to linger on for something—anything.

She misses him.

And she really doesn't know how to change that.

The young woman falls onto the snow in a plump of ice and rests her body down carelessly.

She falls asleep whispering his name over and over and over again.

There's no one to fool. She's still in love with him.

When she wakes up, she'll find herself on a bench on the boundary of Konoha with a properly bandaged arm, and she'll wonder how she'd have gotten there. After a moment of realization and another set of stars being stared at but not anally counted, she'll understand and she'll find herself weeping at the moon.

-x-

They all think she's crazy—that she needs psychological help.

And she begins to think that maybe the world had always been against her.

"Sakura-chan," her mother will begin. "We think that… that maybe you should speak to someone."

She'll nudge them off and glare and maybe cuss a little or a lot and they'll interrupt her uncontrollable burst with a look of discontent.

"You haven't eaten, Sakura-chan!"

"I'm in a perfectly healthy condition," her voice is slithered in a sour taste of venom.

"Sasuke is gone!" Naruto will continuously tell her and the cycle continues with the help of Kakashi and Sai and Choji and Ino and and—

"He's dead!" They say it as if they're cheering.

"There is no record of any surviving Uchiha Clan members."

"They're all _dead_!"

They'll just go on, there's no rest to it.

And she'll argue with each and every one of them every time. He's alive, she knows it. She is sure of it.

"How do you know?" Kakashi-sensei will ask the first time she mentions it, his eye widened.

And Sakura will explain the night, clearly and breathlessly without an inch of hesitation, because it's a night she'll never, ever allow herself to forget. She'll leave them wordless. Her lips are dry and they don't mutter a thing after that.

But Kakashi doesn't know whether to believe her or not—if this is what the lack of nutrients and sleep deprivation has done to her. He discusses it, questions her friends, and tries to find the answers he needs in order to help his old student. He stares at the mess of a girl with a thoughtful eye and bites at the gum of his cheek before he can tell that the story that had escaped her lips moments before had been true. He lies, anyway, for her sake. She needs help, after all.

"I brought you to the road out of Konoha."

Her aquatic green seas of eyes flicker to him and her brows begin to tense before she whispers, ignoring the faces of her peers around them. "Wha… _What_?"

They don't notice Naruto's hand unclenching and clenching every so often as he avoids staring up from the ground before them. It was only he who knew that the words leaving his teacher's mouth had been complete and utter bullshit. Kakashi had been with him after Sakura had left and stormed away that very night. Even Ino hadn't known. She'd left after, trying to find her coral-haired friend. But to her dismay, failed.

Kakashi makes out the words simply and openly and Sakura's breaths become heavier. "I found you. I brought you to the town's edge. Snow isn't the best of beds."

She shakes her head in disbelief. "Then why didn't you just take me home?"

He hesitates, and Sakura finds truth in the glint in his eye, pushing even further.

"Why the edge of Konoha?" She snarls, her arms cross in front of her chest. Her eyes squint as she stares and a brow raises. "Of course you would know the importance of that specific area if you were to bring me there while I was passed out."

Another hesitation and she's angered at all of them.

"How do you guys have the audacity to lie to my face? What kind of people are you?"

"We are good friends, Sakura," Ino snaps, moving her blonde straight hair away from the corners of her eyes. "We did this to help you. We _want_ to help you."

"So to help me, you decide to lie to me?"

"No, we wanted you to move on—," Sai clarifies somewhere behind her.

"By telling me he's _dead_?!" She sighs aloud in disbelief—rage, even before planting her eyes on the silent blonde boy to her right. He gulps, knowing he'd have never seen her this upset. "Was this… _your_ idea?"

Naruto's mouth opens and closes, just like the grip of his hands at his sides. It's uncontrollable. No words come out into the open because he can't place the right ones together. Time is running out and he does not want to screw this whole thing over even more. He swallows, "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan."

Her glare is dead hard on his, the green soul of her eyes empty. He could almost feel the daggers as she scoffs with attitude. "I'm sorry, too."

-x-

She finds herself in wet clothes and damp hair, water streaming down her arms and legs as she's lying down on the pavement. Her red attire is soaked from the lake water she had been carelessly floating in. Beside her is a very wet, very pissed off looking Sasuke Uchiha sitting on one knee watching her.

She forgets how to recollect herself and she begins to choke on water she hadn't known had been caught in her throat. She manages and doesn't take her bottle green eyes away from his, hoping he wouldn't disappear in a single blink. Sakura pinches her arm as she stares at his navy skies. It's not a dream.

Before she could muster a name from her cold lips, he interrupts her.

"Are you fucking stupid?"

"Excuse me?" she says. She hadn't been used to his old _I'm-superior-to-you-and-everyone-else_ attitude.

"Do I need to repeat?" he remarks snidely. Pretentious douchebag he always was. "Are you fucking stupid? It's _how_ many degrees cold and you're in the middle of the fucking _lake_!"

"What's it to you?! I'm completely fine, aren't I?"

"You're fine because I saved your ass!" Sasuke isn't used to this feisty side of this idiotically grown girl.

She's about to say something snotty and wrapped in a poisonous tone when her eyes suddenly grow big.

"What?" He obliviously asks noticing the glimmering of her orbs after a mere second. And before he can question any more, her arms are wrapped around his neck and he doesn't quite know how to react so he doesn't. And she doesn't care. She never cared.

"You're back." And that all that matters.

Stupid girl, he thinks. Sasuke could smell the scent of cherry blossoms come off her pale skin. And he's taken aback when the cheek of his face becomes the bed of her hand in a hard, hard slap that he had surprisingly not see coming. He doesn't say a thing. The boy—no, _man_—knows he deserves it.

Sakura wants to stand up and to leave him rotting away in the cold beside the lake she had been nonchalantly allowing her body to seep in. She wants to leave him like he left her: wordless and without a single fucking care in the world. That's all she wants, but it's as if stones are weighing her down once again because she can't seem to place the weight on her feet. She hates herself for this. She doesn't want to cry—please _god_ no she does not want to cry because he cannot see her weak anymore—he cannot know how little her strength has held up the past five years. It's unnatural and pathetic how much he's affected her and she knows he'll see right through her when those damned tears fall in streaming little rivers down her face.

When he sees the first droplet, Sakura hopes that he's convinced it's probably water dripping from her ridiculously soaked bangs, but she's wrong because he turns away and looks somewhere far off in the distance—somewhere she wouldn't be able to see unless she sat upward but she really resisted moving a single limb.

They stay on the concrete silently, her thoughts constantly screeching at her to just yell at him, but she can't make out the right words. She doesn't know what he's thinking, like usual. Sasuke had always been the type of boy that looked at everyone with the same, stupid expression and think completely different and various things about them. It was a handful of infuriation to her.

"I'm sorry," he initiates, alarming her. "Sakura."

Her name with his voice is almost foreign to her ears. It rolls of his tongue smoothly and she can't believe she had almost forgotten the sound and how much she loved it when he addressed her. She's Sakura Haruno, stunned twenty-one year old, a girl who could not bring herself to hate Sasuke Uchiha, or have it in herself to forgive him.

"It's best if I stay away."

"Why?" her throat is choked up, and this time it isn't the water.

"Konoha is in peace, you know."

She already sees where he's headed with this. It's like her to over-think. "You could be a part of it."

"It really isn't that simple and you know it."

The atmosphere is heavy but she manages to sit upward, beside him. They stare at the fog before the lake, their vision trying to find the royal blue of the serene pool. It's cold yet they both don't seem to mind. She turns the crook of her neck to view the boy beside her, tracing the outline of profile with her stare. He looks the same with the broad jaw and paler than parchment paper skin, and messy, maybe a bit longer (by an inch, at most) locks of ink black. He meets her steady gaze, studying her as well—but his eyes don't linger as long. His face is expressionless.

"You're skinnier," he abruptly states.

"I haven't eaten in days."

"You don't get enough sleep either."

"Am I that obvious?"

"You're pathetic."

"_Look_, Sasuke-kun, I didn't _ask_ for this to ha—"

"I _am _sorry."

"I know." She looks downward at the tiny pebbles and discolorations of cobble stones feeling the mist surround them. She had no clue what time it had been. Nor did she care. She mutters something under her breath that he easily catches, "I still love you."

It's a statement she'll have to live with the rest of her life. Sasuke doesn't say a word, like usual. She knows he's always known, and she mentally scolds herself for being such a stupid, little girl around him. She feels thirteen again, but this time, she feels that there is closure.

"Sakura," he chimes almost inaudibly. "Thank you, for everything."

The last thing she sees is a gloomy Sasuke in front of her. The last thing she feels is his lips on her forehead. The last thing she hears is his footsteps padding off somewhere in the distance. And when she'll awake in the morning on the soft cushion of her bed, she won't remember if this had all been a dream.

And for the very first time, she won't care one bit.

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**finis**

**a/n:** i hope you guys liked this. it's my first sasusaku fic. pllleeeasse review! it would be amazing.


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